This
was previously posted at http://trinitylink.com/blog/?p=255,
but since it really is a companion piece to my previous post, here
it is again...)
Spiritual
Composting
I'm
obsessed with compost.
Whenever
we have moved to a new house, one of the first questions that comes
up is where to put the compost pile. I like to grow things, and, as
an organic gardener hoping to grow flowers and vegetables
successfully, I can't have too much compost. Good compost enriches
the soil and conserves moisture. It keeps some weeds from sprouting
and makes the weeds that do come up easy to pull out. I'm also
fascinated by the process that causes compost to come about, the use
of what is essentially garbage, to make something that causes things
to grow. I take old garden debris and weeds, fruit and vegetable
scraps, fall leaves, small branches pruned from bushes, all things
that would just end up rotting in a landfill. I mix them together
with some horse manure, a little bit of water to make a barely damp
giant salad and give it some time to heat up. I toss this gross
salad occasionally to give it some air, and, given time, I am
eventually rewarded with an earthy brown substance that delights my
tomatoes and encourages way too many zucchini.
The
composting process is a good picture of what God does with the old
garbage of our lives. Most of us, sometime in our adult lives,
realize we have accumulated a lot of debris. We may have let the
seeds of various sins sprout and grow into full blown weeds.
Relationships we thought were green and growing suddenly appear to be
dried and dead and ready to be raked away. Work or family situations
where we have felt we have not lived up to expectations can haunt us
with their smell of failure. Even the good things we see growing in
our lives sometimes experience severe pruning, and we are left not
knowing if we will ever see fruit in that area again as we stand
amidst the once growing branches scattered at our feet.
Throughout
scripture, we see God working in his people, using the debris of
their lives to bring about new growth. Moses, his mother forced to
abandon him or see him killed, is then raised by Pharaoh's daughter
in the pagan society of Egypt. He grows up, only to murder an
Egyptian, and then is scorned by Hebrew slaves. He leaves Egypt and
finds himself tending sheep in the land of Midian...for years. Yet
God uses the events of Moses' life along with those years to make him
fertile ground, an instrument for the deliverance of His people.
Joseph, David, and Peter all have events in their lives that make for
rotting material for the compost heap. And yet each one, in God's
perfect timing, develops into, rich fertile soil. Joseph grows into
a wise leader, saving the Egyptians, and then, through his family,
the whole Hebrew people, from famine; David grows into a man after
God' own heart; Peter grows into a rock of the early Church.
As
believers, we have a Master Gardener who gives us an alternative to
being overwhelmed by the debris in our lives. He promises to work all
things together for good, even those things that we have no more hope
for than a pile of over-ripe bananas. We can come to Him and give
Him our sprouted sin, poisonous to our spiritual lives. We can give
Him our dried up relationships, deadening to our hearts, those smelly
failures, draining of our hope, and the confusing pain of our cut
back branches. He, by His grace and mercy, redeems and transforms
them - yes, even the deadliness of the sprouted sin - and uses them
to generate a rich soil for future growth. Of course, like all good
compost makers, our Gardener will keep us appropriately wet with His
Spirit, allow things to heat up, often more than we would like. He
occasionally tosses things around in our lives, and uses that
necessary, but frustrating thing called time that He always seems to
have more of than we do. But we have a loving Gardener we can trust,
and the finished product is always worth it.
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